throwaway54-762

Sure, Java or C will be much faster at any computational work. And I am no node.js fan-boi. But doing actual asynchronous local-file IO in C is non-trivial, and if their server is not CPU bound, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with using node.js. Could you also use libuv from C? Sure.

There are a couple projects in this direction (I looked into trying to make a bot at one point). Unfortunately, any names have slipped my memory at this point. But be assured, they exist.

I am at work, and don't have minecraft on any machine nearby =).

Cool, a distributed minecraft server. But where's the source, or something more technically meaty? "I made a distributed X and here's some screenshots" isn't that interesting alone.

> In the author's example, the fastest implementation was actually _not_ lock-free, it merely used a better spinlock than std::mutex.

The author is also using gcc 4.6; perhaps different results would be obtained with gcc 4.8 or recent Clang. If you care enough to think about LFDS, measure measure measure =).

Yeah, I live in the PNW of the US, not South America. Coca leaves are basically unavailable.

I wouldn't want to try and use cocaine to focus. While I've tried it once, I don't like the typical routes of administration, the lack of quality control, and financially, supporting the drug cartels.

The only drug I use regularly is caffeine, also (coffee) =).

Thanks for going into more depth here. You understand it much more thoroughly than me =).

> Your body acclimates itself to just about anything - the weather, sugar, MSG, even frequent shampooing or Chap-Stick usage. That doesn't mean those things are comparable to meth.

Yes, of course, tolerance isn't indicative of meth.

> Nobody I know feels that Adderall provides much of a high. Anecdotal, sure, but it seems like a heck of a statistical anomaly.

I would respectively disagree. Yes, typical therapeutic doses of adderall are smaller than typical recreational doses of meth. But that is comparing small apples with bigger apples ;-).

> Then again, I don't know anybody that's experimented with unsafe doses of Adderall. I'm sure that at dangerously high doses, the effect isn't unlike meth.

Or even just at non-dangerously high doses ("normal" meth doses). In other words, if the doses are similar, the effects are similar. You seem to be arguing that because meth is typically consumed at higher doses, it is different.

I agree that typical meth use is very different from typical medical adderall use.

Every person is different, and meth is definitely abused in higher proportions more than prescription adderall — I am not contesting that, or attempting to compare adderall users to meth users.

I am trying to highlight the similarities between the drugs themselves.

> However small the chemical difference, there is an enormous practical difference. Meth can produce an intense high. Adderall, not so much.

This just isn't true. Adderall is several amphetamines and the drug definitely produces a high. The medical application of the drug is this rush of dopamine and seratonin allows users to focus and ignore distractions.

The high is an amphetamine high, much like meth, actually. You've noticed that tolerance diminishes these effects; so have many meth users.

I don't describe it like that to "sound edgy" or provide "shock effect." It's just pointing out that these drugs are very similar chemically and biologically, and that people should examine their own biases that divorce adderall (medicine!) from meth (evil drug!) in their minds — they are not so different substances.

> What you may be referring to is that Adderall, methamphetamine, and MDMA have remarkably similar effects, which is true - the active ingredients in all three are metabolized in a similar manner, and the main differences are the means of ingestion, the bioavailability, and set/setting.

Precisely. I'll add a clarifying edit now that two people have interpreted my statement differently than intended..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5321935

It's figurative, not literal. I am very much aware of desoxyn and that adderall is actually composed of four amphetamine salts, none of them literally meth. However, the amphetamine family of drugs have very similar effects — meth is very similar to adderall is very similar to vyvanse.

Oh, the possible negatives I had in mind were brain-related: "diminishing returns" due to tolerance or other factors after long-term use, and adverse side-effects of the drug flooding your brain with seratonin and dopamine over long periods of time (obviously similar to that observed in long-term methamphetamine use).

The adverse side-effects do not magically go away; however, the benefits are (supposedly) much greater for a person diagnosed with AD(H)D than recreational users. Thus the net gain (benefits - costs) is positive for some people.

It's an extremely hard drug for anybody, ADHD or no. Adderall / Vyvanse is prescription meth[0] (something I've heard from several of my AD(H)D friends). If the pros outweigh the cons for an individual, great; I wish them the best. But while I can't find the research I remember to back this up, it's looking like long-term medication with amphetamines may be ineffective or harmful.

EDIT [0]: Yes, I know that that prescription meth literally exists under the name Desoxyn, that is not what I mean. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5321949 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5321935 .

Other than, e.g., Red Hat[0]?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protoc...

A better title might be "visualizing the object-reference graph in Ruby;" debugging memory leaks is a neat side effect. That being said, it's an interesting little project.

This reminded me to make another donation towards py3k support =). Keep on rocking on, pypy.

WFM now =)

Same, chrome 25.0.1364.97.

It's kind of tough to just start digging in the city. You'll probably hit an existing pipe / line. Permits, etc..

I understand that this makes sense for Mathics. What I don't understand is why Wolfram has any interest in separating the language from the implementation.

How about 'static inline' functions distributed along with the libc header files? You get type / number of arguments correctness and no ABI bloat, at the cost of having (minimal) code in header files and per-object code duplication (possibly solved by an intelligent cc/ld).

No, it's pretty sane. I work at a well-known NAS storage-appliance vendor and we're doing something quite similar in-kernel as a caching layer for our filesystem.

What positive coverage?

Yeah, that costs $200/mo in my area, not including the TV.

No, not really. It's a rough estimate; given that the "Rape statistics" page on Wikipedia you reference puts rape attempts on women in the US at 1 in 6 (meanwhile, the same article puts rape attempts on men in the US at 1 in 33, largely accounted for by prison rape), adding in sexual assault, street harassment, etc can only increase that number. And 1 in 4 is a meaningful thing to visualize. Think of four women you know.

I'm not claiming that for the statistic for the US at large is 100% representative of the tech community. But unless you have a good reason to believe it to be different, it seems like a reasonable starting point.

"Could have" is reaching out into the hypotheticals… as other commenters have said, "let's focus on what has happened." I'm not trying to mob on you, but this branch of hypothetical thinking is always brought up in response to this kind of story, usually by men. It is problematic because it distracts attention from the main issue: systematic harassment of women in our community.

Bringing up this hypothetical is a distraction/derailment tactic used by what I will call 'agents of the patriarchy,' un-wittingly or no. So when you say it, just understand why feminists get annoyed…